“We’re like ducks. We’re not good at either swimming or flying.” This was the response of a graduate student in Wirtschaftsingenieurwesens – a kind of combination of business and engineering, each of them in the lighter form – when asked what subject material her studies involved.
The duck metaphor reveals a conflict in German companies. Those working in sales & marketing are still looked down upon a bit as people who go from door-to-door selling a product (vacuum cleaners is the cliché) which they have neither developed nor manufactured. Even more, colleagues in sales & marketing often feel unfairly blamed when the company does not perform well.
Prestige in the German economy still goes to those who invent, develop and make physical products. Engineers and artisans are among the most highly respected disciplines.
The results of their work can be seen, held, put to work, and depending on their sophistication even marveled at. Whereas the success of capable sales & marketing people can be seen only in dry, impersonal numbers.
In addition, almost all professionals in sales & marketing transitioned into that discipline from another one, perhaps even from engineering. In fact, Germany doesn’t have a traditional Berufsgruppe – occupation category – for sales. There is no guild going back to the Middle Ages as there are for almost all other technical occupations. Thus the duck-metaphor. Neither fish nor fowl.
Nonetheless, the importance of the work “ducks” perform continues to increase in today’s global economy, where quality and technical prowess alone are not enough to sell a product.
Bonn served as the capital of West Germany from 1949 until 1990 and was the seat of government for reunified Germany until 1999, when the government relocated to Berlin. The city holds historical significance as the birthplace of Germany’s current constitution, the Basic Law.
Founded in the 1st century BC as a settlement of the Ubii and later part of the Roman province Germania Inferior, Bonn is among Germany’s oldest cities. It was the capital city of the Electorate of Cologne from 1597 to 1794 and served as the residence of the Archbishops and Prince-electors of Cologne. The period during which Bonn was the capital of West Germany is often referred to by historians as the Bonn Republic.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) – French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America – wrote: “The country appears to stretch on forever and is of limitless resources. But, no matter how fast it grows, it will remain surrounded by resources it cannot possibly exhaust.”
Energy: The United States has more coal reserves than any other country in the world and represent one-quarter of the world’s total coal supply. The U.S. has 272 billion tons of coal reserves and uses about 1.1 billion tons of coal per year. At this rate, America’s 272 billion tons of coal reserves would last nearly 250 years.
According to the 2012 article “American Oil Growing Most Since First Well Signals Independence“ by Asjylyn Loder on bloomberg.com domestic output of oil grew by a record 766,000 barrels a day to the highest level in 15 years, government data shows, putting the nation on pace to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer by 2020.
Net petroleum imports have fallen by more than 38 percent since the 2005 peak, and now account for 41 percent of demand, down from 60 percent seven years ago, moving the United States closer to energy independence than it has been for decades.
Key natural resources: One-third of U.S. land is covered by forests (302 million hectares), making forestland the number one type of land use in the United States. One-fifth of U.S. land is timberland (204 million hectares), which is land capable of producing 1.38 cubic meters per hectare of industrial wood annually. 71 percent of all timberland in the U.S. is privately owned, while 29 percent is publicly owned.
Land: The United States has a land area of 3.8 million miles² (9.8 million km²) compared to 9.7 million km² in China, 0.36 million km² in Germany and 0.38 million km² in Japan.
Population density: United States population density per square mile is 84, compared to 365 for China, 609 for Germany, and 836 for Japan.
All Americans are descendants of immigrants. And the immigrant experience begins with risk-taking. All immigrants risk, to one degree or another, what they own and know. Taking that one great risk, that leap of faith, makes small most later decisions in life. Immigrants are, or have become, by their very nature risk-takers. Americans are risk-takers.
The American economic system encourages entrepreneurship. It pays in the U.S. to establish your own business. Businesses owners who enjoy high success do very well financially. Owners who enjoy medium success do well financially. Those, however, who enjoy low success do very poorly financially. “No risk, no reward.”
Small businesses – firms with fewer than 500 employees – drive the American economy by providing jobs for over half of the nation’s private sector workforce. Small businesses are job creators, representing 99.7% of all firms. They make up the following: 64% of net new private-sector jobs, 49.2% of private-sector employment, 46% of private-sector output, 43% of high-tech employment, 98% of firms exporting goods and 33% of exporting value.
Small businesses create more than half of the private non-farm gross domestic product and create 60-80% of net new jobs. 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics small firms accounted for 64% of the net new jobs created or 11.8 million of the 18.5 million net new jobs between 1993 and 2011. Since the latest recession, from mid-2009 to 2011, small firms, led by the larger ones in the category (20-499) employees, accounted for 67% of the net new jobs.
The history of Germany, as well as the historical consciousness of the German people, continue to impress and attract me. Today, just as strongly as a quarter century ago. You need only to go into a bookstore in Germany. Their books are not only solid, well bound and have great covers. The Germans have a very special relationship to books. There are always many older and newer publications about history, about their history. For those Germans who want to know their history there will never be a shortage of opportunities.
Every city in Germany, large and small, has museums in which history, but not only theirs, is told, is kept alive and relevant. In my early years in Berlin and Bonn I was astounded by how many fascinating and well-made documentary films were shown on German television. There was never a day without at least one in the evening. The German language is worth learning if only to read their books, to visit their museums, and to watch their documentaries. Although not a documentary, but one with the look and feel of one, was Heimat, by Edgar Reitz.
It was the summer of 1992. I watched episode for episode of Heimat. My eyes were glued to the television, my mind racing to understand every word, to pick up on as many nuances as possible. What an opportunity for me to gain insight in Germany of that time period, between the world wars. Time and again I had to turn to my then German wife to get the meaning of this or that word, for the dialogue was in the dialect of that region of Germany, the Hunsrück, along the Moselle River, between Trier and Koblenz. After every episode I was in a kind of trance, reflecting about what I had just taken in.
Then another time. I was in the car. Driving through Bonn. Evening. I turned on the radio. Deutschlandfunk. A book review was being read. It was about the immediate post-war years in then West Germany. The first sentences grabbed my attention. They flowed: complex, clear, rich, full of substance, critical, analytical, yet elegant. That feeling had come back, from when I was a student at Georgetown. History. German History. The history of another people. In another part of the world. And when I read the books by John Lukacs. Trance.
The reader continued. I was captured, drove further, but as if on a soft cloud just a few inches above the road. I think of the many war memorials in Germany. When I walk or ride my bicycle down the hill from the Venusberg in Bonn to the former government quarter on the Rhine, I pass through Kessenich where there is such a memorial.
It’s round, cement, encircling a lovely oak tree. Six pillars about eight feet high. Plenty of space between them to step in and out. The tops of all eight crowned – or held together – by a cement ring providing the tree with space to stretch out its branches. Just below the top each of the eight the face in cement of a German soldier with the iconic German steel helmet from the World War I.
Chiseled into the pillars, from the top to just about the bottom, are the names of the men who died in the two world wars. Six pillars, three sides each. Longs lists. Names. Of men, and boys, from that part of Bonn, from the neighborhood. Yes, boys, many no older than seventeen or eighteen years old. Sad. Especially sad for me, as one of five Magee boys, to read the same last names. Meyer. Schmitz. Leyendecker. Two, three, sometimes four of the same last names. Brothers. Cousins.
Imagine the deep, deep sadness of the mothers and fathers who saw their boys go off to war only to kill and be killed. 1914. 1915. 1916. 1917. 1918. Four long years for an entire continent. Then on the other sides of the pillars. 1939. 1940. 1941. 1942. 1943. 1944. 1945. Many of the same names. The sons and nephews of those fallen between 1914 and 1918. The Germans suffered, too.
Scottish-American Andrew Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century with the Carnegie Steel Company. Carnegie established public libraries throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking counties.
He funded approximately 3,000 libraries in 47 states in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and Fiji. He donated 50,000 British pounds to help establish the University of Birmingham in 1899.
British- and Irish-American Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company and was sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His development of the assembly line allowed many middle class Americans to afford and buy automobiles. Ford left most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation.
William “Bill” Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company. He co-founded Microsoft with colleague, Paul Allen. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. After studying the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Gates sold some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the William H. Gates Foundation.
In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is currently the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.
The American culture admires risk-takers. They are considered to be courageous, ingenious, hard-working, forward thinking. The American experience is one of trial and error. It begins with how parents raise their children to try things, to attempt more than before, to experiment. A mistake is only one when one doesn‘t learn from it. Trial and error is moving forward, is getting better at something. It is synonymous with learning by doing.
As a nation-state, in their international relations, Americans warn against becoming involved in complexity. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) – an English-American political theorist-activist, author, and revolutionary – instilled non-interventionist ideas into the politics of the American colonies.
His work Common Sense (1776) argued in favor of avoiding alliances with foreign powers and influenced the Second Continental Congress to avoid forming an alliance with France.
George Washington’s farewell address restated Paine’s maxim: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation.
Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.“
Thomas Jefferson extended Paine’s ideas in his inaugural address on March 4, 1801: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
In 1823, President James Monroe articulated what would become the Monroe Doctrine: “In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense.“
H.R. McMaster, February 2017 until April 2018 National Security Advisor under President Donald Trump, describes how critical it was at the beginning of his tenure to get clarity on scope. Listen to minutes 3:00 to 4:15 about “the nature of the problem”, and about “framing out the problem”:
McMaster earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He turned his dissertation on the strategy of the U.S. in the Vietnam War into his book entitled Dereliction of Duty.
Mark Shields was a long-time political journalist. He had a nationally-sydicated column for decades, and was well known for his weekly analysis with David Brooks – a New York Times columnist – on the PBS NewsHour. Listen to minutes 7:28 to 9:25.
D-Day Landings (June 6, 1944). General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to launch the Allied invasion of Normandy was made under immense pressure, with weather and intelligence uncertainties. Despite imperfect information, Eisenhower famously gave the go-ahead with the words “OK, let’s go,” understanding that waiting for perfect conditions could mean missing the opportunity entirely. The bold, timely decision was crucial to the success of the operation and is often cited as a defining example of American decisiveness and willingness to act quickly.